Mouse pointer wrong - CompizConfig tip helped once
 

My husband and I have recently installed Mint 11 on our computers. He has had a problem with his mouse pointer turning into a large, fat black X. The into screen that was on FireFox after reload mentioned a known issue and suggested clicking on the ConfigFusion Icon and selecting 'metacity.' That fixed it yesterday. This morning the X was back and getting to the ConfigFusion Icon was not as simple. It wasn't on the taskbar. Opening ConfigFusion from the menu did not give the option to select 'metacity,' either. After some investigation on both our parts (This is why we run the same OS on our side-by-side computers, it makes trouble shooting easier) we found how to put that icon on the taskbar and he was able to get the mouse back to a normal pointer.

We have gone to Control Center and set his preferences to match mine, as I have had no pointer issues. I was having issues with the tops of the windows losing the buttons but now that I have selected 'Aging Gorilla' (for Pete's sake, these names are a riot!) things have been stable.

We really want to make this 2nd try at running Linux work for us. No need to say how frustrated we are with the alternative. Mint 11 has a crisp clean appearance and is much more intuitive than the last system we tried. I will say the last try was 7 years ago. The developers have not been sleeping all that time, they have done a great job.

If anyone have anything to add about the pointer issue, please do.

Kind regards to all,
white stone & hubby

(I think the icon is "CompizFusion" not ConfigFusion)

If you can see the icon, does its menu have a "Reload window manager" option? If so, try that.

If not, press Alt-F2 for a "Run application" window and type Actions like those should fix the problem when it arises, but really it shouldn't happen. What hardware are you running on - in particular what graphics card?

Hello SecretCode:

Glad you replied. That problem happened again. We went out and wehn we got back home and booted up - that big, fat X was back as the mouse pointer. My husband tried ALT - F2 but it didn't do anything. He opened the Terminal Window and entered what you suggested. It started running files and the pointer turned back in to the white arrow. Tried to close the Terminal Window but got a message that something was still running, so he minimized it. What is running? Should he do something to complete the action?

His video card is an Nvidia GeForce 6200TC 512 ddr.

Hope this helps. It is driving him nutty.

Plus, please anyone let us know if we have to do more with the terminal.

Regards,
WhiteStone and Husband